This is a blogg* to share my eXcess; that which reached, touched, entertained or angered me, in general all that draws my interest and thereby transmutes my Xsistance.
Eclectic music, metaphysics, (pre)history, conspiracies against humanity, the environment.

Mar 26, 2013

RhoDeo 1312 Roots

Hello, last week we crossed the pond over to the world of skunk, that powerful marihuana, cultivated by Dutch agricultural students. With the liberal laws which lured so many foreigners to the dutch coffeshops one of those decided to stay close to his inspirational source is today's artist who decided to set up shop (his studio) in the Netherlands.

Twilight Circus is the Dub and reggae project of multi-instrumentalist Ryan Moore, former bassist & drummer of the Legendary Pink Dots. He originally started off producing dub albums, before recording vocalists such as Big Youth, Michael Rose of Black Uhuru and Ranking Joe. However, here we concentrate on his earlier dub work .... N'joy

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Born and raised in Vancouver, BC, Moore began playing bass at the age of 13 after his first exposure to Bob Marley's classic Natty Dread; Moore's fascination with dub began in the early 1980's, inspired by the nexus of punk rock and dub which film maker Don Letts forged in London, along with the futuristic possibilities hinted at by cyberpunk author William Gibson in Neuromancer. Throughout the 80's he obsessively collected every dub LP he could find, which included Jamaican dub from legends like King Tubby, Prince Jammy, Lee Perry and Scientist as well as 2cnd generation figures operating from London like Adrian Sherwood, Mad Professor, and Jah Shaka. This fascination with dub continued in the years to follow despite working as a studio musician with Nettwerk Records and collaborating with industrial acts like Skinny Puppy, Download and Single Gun Theory. Joining the Legendary Pink Dots in 1991, two years later Moore relocated to the Netherlands, forming Twilight Circus in 1995 and issuing In Dub Vol. 1 on his own M Records label.
From 1994 to the present Moore has made recordings for Twilight Circus in Vancouver, London, Kingston-Jamaica, and The Netherlands - where he has his own studio.

Since being the opening act for Skinny Puppy side project Download on their 1996 World tour and several tours billed with the Legendary Pink Dots, Twilight Circus has maintained a busy schedule playing all over the World on nearly every continent, including major festivals like Dour Festival, Summerjam, Fuji Rock Festival, One Love (UK), Sierra Nevada World Music Festival.

A dub plate is a unique acetate platter created specifically for a DJ sound system, but with the elementally deep bass generated by Twilight Circus' Ryan moore (a Canadian expatriate living in the Netherlands, who essentially is Twilight Circus), "tectonic plates" seems a more appropriate term. The bottomless bass and rubbery tempo of this music conjure images of massive primordial forces, the menace of a slow-moving lava flow. These dub plates originate from twilight Circus' dub performances, representing both new material and unreleased remixes of older tracks. They navigate the intersecting sound-spaces of reggae-patterned dub, jungle and ambient electronica, cavorting through cavernous reverb, otherworldly electronic effects and the ocassional deconstructed melodic fragment. Delightfully, this is no gratuitous elecronica samplefest - in fact it's not a samplefest at all - because Moore avoids the usual drum boxes and electronic toys in favor of fat bass lines and real drums (supplied ob three plates by no less than Sly Dunbar). So there's blood and sweat amongst the circuitry.

The indefatigable Ryan Moore keeps up the Dub pressure with this, his seventh album release as Twilight Circus, purveyor of fine Seventies-styled Dubs to the kids... and beyond. One of the first impressions of Dub Voyage, as is only to be expected, is the bass, Moore's production has rarely sounded this crisp. The Seventies classics are the obvious influence, with "Wareika" paying homage to the late Augustus Pablo via a melodica paean and some formidable bass acreage, but there's something indefinably contemporary about the TC sound which takes the template and makes it Moore's own. Squishy analogue synth lines whip like power cables in a desert storm or gurgle into the undertow, bleeps and whistling abound, electric pianos skank the melody before another wave of boom and beat crashes on the shorefront... such appropriate images on the sleeve, the shaking palm trees, the turbulent pounding of the sea.

Canadian dub master Ryan Moore releases his third set of special mixes cut for his rockin' live performances. Moore keeps things roots-oriented by focusing on pure reggae captured through tube gear like in the pioneering days. Twilight Circus dubs are mixed live for that vintage fat and spacious sound, garnering worldwide praise for their authenticity. The motivating groove is in the drums and the cool low bass lines, with melodic sprinkles of piano, organ and harmonica echoing throughout devastating versions like "Floor Plate," based on his tribute to producer Prince Jammy, "Floorshaker," from the Volcanic Dub release. What makes Moore's tracks so stunning is his ability through his instrumentation (all played and mixed himself) and careful panning arrangements to produce a sound that evokes the expansiveness of three-dimensional space. From the bass undulations to the high-flying whines and whirls, and the expansive mid-range effects, Dub Plates 3 is sonic depth exemplified and are working at the seismic level!

6 comments:

Sorry for that but I don't notice any problems and there have been plenty of downloads of today's post. I just checked and got this message from websitedown.

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